Superhero Movie Superhero Movie is a parody of all the comic movies that have come out in the last couple of years. This movie takes swipes at the X-men series, the Fantastic Four, Batman, and contains huge portions of the Spiderman series as well. This movie was written, directed, and produced by Craig Mazin. His latest films have been Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4 (this is not a huge plus in my book). Watching this movie is like eating one small Little Debbie cake, nice but nowhere near a full meal.
Making a good parody is a very tricky affair. It is not easy at all to make a really good parody. Some of the best parodies I have ever seen were done by Mad Magazine way back when it was a comic book in the 50s. I love those (and they have recently been released in a large format, "Mad Archives" though they are a little pricey). Another successful parody that comes to mind is The Simpsons take on Planet of the Apes, where they turn the Charles Heston film into a musical on Broadway. It not only makes fun of the original film, but it is a devastating parody of Broadway's tendency to take Hollywood movies and try to turn them into big Broadway musicals (as in Big). If you would like to see this it is in the episode named "A Fish Called Selma" which is the nineteenth episode in The Simpsons' seventh season. It may be one of the funniest things the Simpsons ever put on the screen, though I am sure you could argue about that for quite awhile. I have never been a big fan of Family Guy. They do parodies left and right, but most of them are not all that funny, they seem to come out of left field, and are not well integrated into the storyline. They don't flow at all. They just take up time. Just because you CAN parody something does not necessarily make it funny. The Simpsons piece works because it takes two different ideas and forces them together in a new form. It is a wonderful piece of writing AND performance, with a HUGE nod to Phil Hartman. This is everything a parody should be.
 Superhero Movie is very much a hit and miss affair. The script is flat, and the acting doesn't really pull us in at all. Pamela Anderson is wasted in this movie (a comment on how she was used in the film, not that she was personally wasted while making the movie). By far the funniest thing in the movie is a Tom Cruise take-off which pops up every now and then throughout the movie (but doesn't really have much to do with the plot though). Most of the other jokes and set pieces are fairly obvious and not all that laugh inducing, though it would not be fair to say that they all fall flat. The main problem is that they are just not that inventive. The movie doesn't go down all that badly though, because if something doesn't work in a couple of minutes something else will pop up that will. You don't get the impression that there was any comic genius behind this script. If Craig Marzin is doing all the writing, maybe he should think of getting someone else to help him with it. This movie contains no real surprises. The main culprit is the writing. It is very predictable. A good riff on superheroes is on Norm MacDonald's Ridculous, where he does a bit about the Fantastic Four arguing over why Reed Richards gets to be called Mr Fantastic, but everyone else is names for their powers (The Human Torch, Invisible Girl).
If you do go see this movie, be sure and sit through the credits. There are just about as many jokes in the credits as there are in the movie (okay I am stretching a bit). The jokes and outtakes do not start till a couple of minutes of the credits had floated by, so a lot of people had already left the theater and missed them completely. There are also a lot of cameos throughout the movie if you like that sort of thing. Leslie Nielsen holds his own very well as the superhero's uncle, and brings a well needed boast to this movie. He is not on the screen a lot, but he is appreciated.
You can write James Harper at movielover77061@yahoo.com |
